The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace Read Online Free PDF

something about faulty wiring, andshe got out of his way.
    And the house on Pierson Street just stayed like that, a torched shell, while Skeet moved into his rented apartment on Chestnut Street but continued to pay the property taxes on the now-useless plot of land.

    O AKDALE E LEMENTARY S CHOOL was on Lincoln Avenue, just a few blocks west. Redbrick, two stories, with a footprint in the shape of the Chevrolet logo, the local public school looked like a nice enough place to send a six-year-old. When Jackie’s younger siblings had gone there, it had been. When Rob began kindergarten, it was no longer. The school’s decline wasn’t immediately evident. The interiors were generally well maintained, the curriculum in keeping with federal guidelines, the other kids more or less what they were: kids, just barely past toddlerhood. Jackie would walk Rob there and watch him join the stream of children his age going inside with backpacks and lunches, usually turning at the door to wave. But she observed something less tangible in the expressions and movements of the teachers, the laissez-faire attitudes of fellow parents. Most of these children, Jackie felt, were being sent here to be watched for a few hours, not to be taught.
    She had gently floated the idea of private school past her parents, and they’d both shaken their heads. He’s six, they told her. He’s not reading Shakespeare. He’s not learning cutting-edge chemistry. Kindergarten was about being with people his age and maybe picking up some simple letters and arithmetic. Paying significant money for an elementary education was silly, considering what she earned. They told her to spend her income on feeding, clothing, and sheltering him. Education was what they all paid taxes for—a whole lot of taxes in this state.
    Still, she talked to Skeet about it. Catholic schools, the cheapest of the private options, generally cost $200 a month. If they split it, then Jackie would be paying only a quarter of her own salary toward education: manageable if not ideal. Skeet looked at her and said she was being “uppity.” Though he was speaking off-the-cuff, the word carried weight.Where they lived, being known by this label meant that you thought you were better than everyone else around you, that you deserved more, and that—given the opportunity—you would leave this place behind without a second thought. There was shame in thinking like that. Jackie didn’t understand what the term had to do with her wanting the best education they could afford for their son, but Skeet had deployed it at just the right moment to make her second-guess.
    So Rob went to Oakdale, where by Skeet’s reckoning he would learn how to stop being a mama’s boy and become a man respected, listened to, and followed by other men. This was more important than humanities and sciences.
    The transition to school brought another transition—Skeet began buying Rob things, mostly clothes and music. Jackie resented these purchases heavily, especially coming from a man who refused to pay $100 a month for school, but she stayed quiet about it, which was hard for her to do. The rap group N.W.A. was the worst, with songs like “One Less Bitch” and “Fuck tha Police” that contained not even a nod toward grammatical consistency let alone morality. Skeet worked out in a boxing gym on Halsted Street a few times a week, and a punching dummy soon appeared in the corner of the room she still shared with the boy, a bottom-heavy rubber bowling pin featuring a cartoon white man with a handlebar mustache that righted itself regardless of the force with which it was knocked over. Like a salty manager, Skeet worked with the boy intensely. He taught Rob to swing his arms laterally from wide angles, so that a fist to the temple could be followed by an elbow to the chin.
    â€œElbows, elbows, elbows,” he would chant. “No one ever sees them